The Ecologists’ Movement of Macedonia – DEM is a non-governmental, non-profitable and apolitical association. It is a national association that includes 30 local environmental NGOs as full-members and 16 other organizations and institutions as associated members. It was established in 1990 as a necessity to coordinate the work of the existing local groups. We are members of the Friends of the Earth – International (FoEI) and International Union for Conservation of Nature. Also, we have a good cooperation and communication with many neighbours’ NGOs.
From December 1994 each local member group of DEM formed their own youth clubs. On 25-th of November 1995 youth clubs formed a youth brunch of DEM, as a DEM-Youth. Since than lots of actions have been taken by the young ecologists. DEM-Youth objective is to raise youth awareness concerning environmental protection, sustainable development, and preservation of nature at the lowest level of destruction. DEM -Youth activities: public protests against the air pollution, cycle races, anti-nuclear protests, protests against waste disposal, clean-up actions in different places in Macedonia, Campaign for National Park “Mavrovo”, Climate Campaign, summer working and educational camps, work-shops, SEEYN conference, street theatres, exhibitions etc.
Every year DEM – Youth is organizing work camps in Macedonia and in the last years there ware international camps too. The first work camp was organized in 1995 like “Matka ’95”, and then there ware “Pesna ’97”, “Lesnovo ’98”, “Ilinska crkva ’99”, “Plavica 2001/02” and “Breza 2000”, “Pelister 2001/02”, “Ohrid 2002”, “Pretor 2002” that were international work camps. The local youth clubs members of DEM – Youth traditionally are organizing these camps: “Plavica”, “Pelister”, “Matejce”, “Plackovica” and “Matka”. The work camps are organized in two parts: work part and a part for education. In the firs part the young people make tables, benches, garbage baskets and they are cleaning the environment. In the second part they have a possibility to take part in different kind of workshops.
Also, DEM – Youth as a member of SEEYN works on voluntary exchange in the region and till now we have exchanged 6 long-term volunteers. One of the biggest projects of this network was “SEE Youth towards Johannesburg”, organizing Eco bus tour through South East Europe, ware DEM – Youth was a responsible for Macedonian part of the project. DEM-Youth is a member of FYEG (Federation of Young European greens), South East European Youth Network (SEEYN), EYFA as a full member and YEE-Youth and Environment Europe as an associated member.